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It’s at least partly about oil, if not primarily about it and only dimly about antiterrorism—the determination of the Bush administration and its chief altar boy Tony Blair of the United Kingdom to wage war on Iraq.

Iraq’s proven oil reserves are estimated at 115 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia’s 261 billion. The Iraqi government is building up these reserves to an eventual 300 billion barrels.

Iraqi oil production is currently at three million barrels per day. The Iraqi government has said that this can go up to as high as six million barrels a day five years after UN sanctions are lifted. The sanctions—imposed after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990—have prevented the further development of Iraqi oil resources. The country is also sitting on a vast, virtually untapped ocean of natural gas.

On the other hand, US oil production is progressively declining even as US national consumption of oil products like gasoline rises daily. Not known for the responsible use of resources, or even simple ecological awareness, 25 years after the energy crisis of the seventies Americans still drive around in huge gas-guzzling vehicles, among them the eight-cylinder sports utility vehicles that have become popular in recent years for moms taking the kids to school and going for groceries as well as for the family’s long-distance trips to the mountains or the seashore.

It’s not only the pleasures and lifestyles of the average American consumer—the biggest depleter of nonrenewable resources in the world and the planet’s most profligate—that’s affected by the state of US energy resources, however.

The state of those resources also has a strategic significance in terms of possible US vulnerability as a result of its increasing dependence on foreign energy sources. The American war machine, the most ravenous for fuel in the world, would be severely affected if it relied on US domestic energy sources alone, for example.

The drying up of foreign oil sources is thus something US strategists will want to prevent. Or to put it in positive terms, access to oil resources that will guarantee the United States energy security is obviously in the US national and corporate interest. As one American professor of world security studies puts it, the United States appears to be pursuing “a strategy of global oil acquisition.”

Professor Michael Klare of Hampshire College points out (“Bush’s Master Oil Plan” —www.AlterNet.org) several US government initiatives this year to implement the strategy in several regions of the world, among them the Caspian Sea Basin, where the US is building new military bases; Colombia, where local troops trained and equipped by the US are guarding the (US) Occidental Petroleum Co.’s Cano Limon pipeline; and Venezuela, where leaders of the aborted coup against President Hugo Chavez have met, and apparently have close ties with, US Embassy personnel. One can safely add war against Iraq, where the returns are likely to be tremendous, to that list.

“The aim of this strategy is simple,” says Klare. “It is to procure as much of the world’s oil for ravenous US markets as possible.”

Increasing US dependence on imports has made the use of US military and political power necessary to secure its foreign oil sources. The US campaign for energy security, says Klare, was first laid out in the national energy plan drawn up by US Vice President Dick Cheney in early 2001 and released by the Bush administration in May this year.

The Cheney plan basically makes three points:

1. The United States must satisfy an ever increasing share of its oil demand with imported supplies. The US currently imports 53 percent of its total consumption. It is projected to increase to 65 percent by 2020.

2. The United States cannot depend solely on traditional foreign suppliers like Canada, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. It will also have to obtain supplies from new sources. (underscoring supplied)

3. The United States cannot rely on market forces alone to gain access to these supplies, but will require US government effort “to overcome foreign resistance to the outward reach of American energy companies.” (underscoring supplied)

The point most relevant to the current drive for war against Iraq is point number 3, which implies the use of American military and political power to break down such resistance, not only to insure US access, but also American oil companies’ (Texaco, Chevron, Unocal, etc.) exploitation of new sources of foreign oil.

In short: rather than reduce domestic oil demand by compelling US automakers to develop energy-efficient vehicles, for example, and in order to satisfy both consumer as well as government demands, the United States must secure foreign energy sources, while at the same time assuring US oil companies access to the latter.

Given the current world order, the US campaign for energy security—and incidentally the assurance that some of its leaders identified with Big Oil can profit from that arrangement—necessarily includes “regime change” in Iraq. While some of the actual US foreign sources of energy, such as Saudi Arabia, are firmly in the US orbit of influence, some of the potential sources, such as Iraq, are governed by hostile regimes.

On the other hand, whoever said that the interests of states cannot be separated from the interests of the classes that control them is being proven right. US President George W. Bush and his family, as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, are identified with Texas oil interests with links to the Saudi Arabian royal family.

Although the oil ventures of the Bush family did not flourish, an Iraq governed by US- installed and controlled leaders would presumably be extremely friendly to the exploitation by US companies of Iraqi oil resources. (“Regime change” in Baghdad would also mean the lifting of UN sanctions, which would leave the way open for US oil companies to develop the vast Iraqi oil resources.)

Along the way, however, the United States is establishing a dangerous principle in the global order over which it currently presides. No US statement has even hinted that “regime change” in Iraq would not lead to similar attempts by the US in, say, Iran, North Korea or any other country the US considers hostile to it and where changes in government would be to its interests.

This makes near-perpetual war in this century courtesy of the sole remaining superpower not only a distinct possibility but a dire probability.

The US goal, as Klare puts it, is simple: it is to procure—and secure—as much of the world’s oil resources for itself. Along the way, however, it certainly will not balk at the prospect of creating a global empire in which, thanks to its military might, it can do what it pleases, when it pleases and where it pleases.

There’s a term for that straight out of US pop culture, and it’s world domination. As a starting point in that campaign, Iraq fits the bill so well, it’s as if the US invented it precisely to achieve its purposes. It’s easy enough to accuse Iraq of possessing “weapons of mass destruction,” for example, and of being a rogue state. Saddam Hussein is also so stereotypical of the home-grown dictator that “regime change” in Iraq has a decidedly attractive ring to it. Make no mistake about it, however. What this is all about—and what the other wars the US will wage in the future will be about—is oil.

(ABS-CBNNEWS.COM/TODAY, September 28, 2002)

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